Low-carb diets and ketosis

[Mindtowork]

So....what does this accomplish. ? Is it a way to regulate calories or is there truth to the notion that carbs have a great impact on bodyweight? I've long been of the notion that a calorie is a calorie

I'm not going to get into the "calorie is a calorie" debate, beyond: The human body is very complex, it has many gears. A calorie is a calorie, but you and I can do the exact same activity and I might burn 20% more (or less) calories than you. I might do the same activity 3 days in a row and burn very different numbers of calories each day. Calories in/calories out is a great first order estimate, but ultimately we have crap ways of measuring the calories out side of the equation (other than long term trends of the scale. It's largely irrelevant.

If you're gaining weight/over-weight, you need to eat less, over a long time, to stop/lose the weight.

If you're losing weight or failing to gain, you need to eat more, over a long time, to stop/gain weight.

The magic of keto, to me, is this: Once in ketosis and fat-adapted I found myself less hungry, less often, which lead to me naturally eating less and therefore losing weight. When I burn carbs I get hungry, ravenously hungry, ever 3-4 hours. When I'm in ketosis I might get hungry after a 18 hour fast. Weight control, when I only feel like eating 1-2 meals a day, is a lot easier than when I feel like eating 5 meals a day. Now recently I've been trying to cut, but also trying to eat many separate servings of protein a day. This has not worked for me, and I think I'm going back to 1-2 meals a day (while cutting).

So long story short, keto enables portion/meal control which enables weight control.

That makes sense. I do get hungrier when im on a high carb kick

FWIW, IF or Time Restricted Feeding (TRF?) usually has the same benefit without the need to chug coconut oil or cover your vegetables in mayo and bacon.

It also has a lot more data to support it's health outcomes. And I don't mean scientific studies (though it has more of that too) -- humans have been doing IF since literally day one of our species and we're still here.

Thanks! Im gonna look in to that as well!

[Wilhelm]

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jnme/2018/5157645/

[MPhelps]

Besides eating whatever I want during the holidays or any special occasion, I feel like low carb, high fat, moderate protein works well for satiation and keeping my weight stable. I ate whatever I wanted at thanksgiving and didn't really care because I knew that I wouldn't be eating like that daily.

I eat more calorie dense, salty foods and don't feel hungry all the time. I eat 4 wasa crackers at lunch, and sweet potato for dinner, plus some sugar in the form of honey or maple syrup around exercise. I stopped counting calories and am enjoying bacon, cheese in small amounts, salted cured meats and stuff like olives in abundance. I've been maintaining weight well.

Strict keto wasn't working for me since I do a lot of cardio activity. I might try it again after ski season. Maybe try to find the elusive fat adaption.

[aurelius]

Can anyone recommend a good Keto Cookbook for someone with basic kitchen skills?

[platypus]

Can anyone recommend a good Keto Cookbook for someone with basic kitchen skills?

Although it’s not a book, I’ve found r/ketorecipes and r/ketodrunk on reddit to be really helpful. Especially if you search by top, all time.

For a while I did keto as basically just meat, veggies, water, and vodka; but these subreddits opened my eyes to a while new world of deliciousness. Pizza, burgers, cocktails, and so much more.

[5hout]

I've been stuck in a plateau of annoyance for 2 weeks now. Running like a 350-500 cal/day deficit and dropped half a lbs in 2 weeks. This has happened before on keto and usually means I'll have an epic all-night pee session and lose 2 lbs in a night, but still annoying. On the other hand, I found pre-packaged riced cauliflower with other vegs in microwavable from frozen bags that have 12g total carbs in my local store. Pretty tasty, added some KCl and homemade turkey stock.

Anyone do anything special supplement wise to watch the carbs? I'm getting like 8g of carbs per day from supplements/pills. It's not a huge issue, because I only eat 15g of carbs per day right now most of the time, but wondering if it's messing with my water retention a bit.

[Wilhelm]

I don't think i have any carbs from supplements.
No chewable vitamins.

I have been using whey concentrate instead of isolate, so i get 6.7 carbs there 3X day.
once i'm bulking again, i'll want the extra calories concentrate has.
It's not much, but it helps when trying to hit a surplus.

I've been allowing myself to get more carbs than usual lately, like in the 30 to 40g range, if it works out that way.

Prunes are great, but 2 of them are 10 carbs. I don't eat them everyday though.
During this cut, i'm doing a Tbsp of peanut butter each day too, so 2 grams there, 4 grams carbs in my brocolli, and 1 im my 1/2 avacodo if i have that.
Add 1/4 cup cottage cheese, or 1/4 cup blueberries, and that's mid 30s to 40.
Think i did high 20s yesterday.

*1,685 cals, and 34.6g carbs today.
Did have two prunes, but skipped brocolli today.
Just got too busy this morning doing snow removal, and didn't feel like doing brocolli by the time i had breakfast.
I get from 1 to 1.5 g carbs per day from flax as well.

I've settled in at around 1,600 calories a day.
1,800 is still plenty acceptable for a pretty drastic deficit.

[5hout]

Hmm. Interesting. Think I'm going to give it another 4 or 5 days and then just cut more aggressively. Next Monday starts a 'planned' deload, so a good time to drop some calories from the diet. Since I've lost a lot of weight in the past I sometimes get fbook msgs from people asking me how. Eventually I always end up saying "Yeah, I don't really care how much you think you're eating, if the scale isn't moving at all for weeks you're eating too much". Think it's time to take my own advice.

[Wilhelm]

My tolerance for coconut oil in my coffee has dropped significantly after maintaining and cutting over the winter.

I basically can't do it anymore, at least not in the morning.

[Bliss]

A bump for this wealth of info thread!

I quite suddenly decided to cut since realising that I'm not training and this is a good opportunity to undo at least some of the last half-year - year "damage" and be not jacked, but at least lean(er) for the coming summer.

Also decided to try low carb to experiment and see if it works for my style of eating and whether I can feel the cognitive and hunger-blunting and whatever other numerous benefits attributed to ketosis.

So i basically cut out anything with sugar or flour in it, rice, pasta, potatoes, beans, buckwheat - that was really easy.

Stuff I cut out in an attempt to keto but which is really hard and not something I can sustain - fruits, berries and carby veg like beetroot and carrots.

However, I absolutely cannot let go of dairy, especially milk and all of its non-cheese derivatives.

As a result, for this first week I averaged 64 grams of carbs.

Do you have any tips?
How to tell if this is low enought carbs or not to stay away from the aforementioned limbo of not-yet-keto AND too low-carb.

[Wilhelm]

Heavy cream has basically no carbs.

Are you counting net carbs?
Subtract tthe dietary fiber from total carbs of items.

A site i relied upon heavily has been nutritiondata.self.com
I don't bother searching from the site though.
I'm sure you could figure it out though.

I just type - Broccoli nutrition data
Then click on the google result that is that site.

This page will come up
https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/ve ... cts/2356/2

There is a portion selector drop down, and i chose 1 ounce here.
Gives quite a lot of detail, and importantly, total carbs, and dietary fiber amounts.
So a little over a gram per ounce net carbs for 1 ounce broccoli.

If you're at 64 grams net, you likely will want to get that under 50.
If you can get really low, like 20ish at first, you'll deplete liver glycogen faster, and get into ketosis sooner.

Some people like to do it like that.

Lately i have been higher than i was for a long time.
30 to 50 per day.

It's possible for a very physically active person to do a good bit more carb and remain in ketosis.
But i mean more than just lifting weights active.


The 50 grams net per day is a common reference for "normal" people though.

[JohnHelton]

If you go carnivore for just a few days, you get into ketosis extremely quickly. I think it took me less than 48 hours. Then you can start to add a few net carbs back if you want. Like @Wilhelm, I found that I could eat very high protein, and it didn't affect my ketosis. I was eating meat, eggs, and some cheese.

[Bliss]

Are you counting net carbs?
Subtract tthe dietary fiber from total carbs of items.

Good point, no, just the total-total from MyFitnessPal.
I'll collect some more statistics and analyse the net-fiber carbs at a later date.

A site i relied upon heavily has been nutritiondata.self.com

Gives quite a lot of detail, and importantly, total carbs, and dietary fiber amounts.

That's great, I'll definitely check some of the MFP values against that.
Already doing that with all MFP data as its a clusterfuck on the whole. Macros not adding up to total calories, zeroes for calories, plainly wrong numbers etc...

If you're at 64 grams net, you likely will want to get that under 50.
If you can get really low, like 20ish at first, you'll deplete liver glycogen faster, and get into ketosis sooner.

Some people like to do it like that.

Lately i have been higher than i was for a long time.
30 to 50 per day.

It's possible for a very physically active person to do a good bit more carb and remain in ketosis.
But i mean more than just lifting weights active.


The 50 grams net per day is a common reference for "normal" people though.

"Normal" for 99.9% of the time for sure.
I'll try to set a hard(er) limit on 50 g for now.
No way could do under 20.

Using MCT oil if that's important for the discussion.

I found that I could eat very high protein, and it didn't affect my ketosis. I was eating meat, eggs, and some cheese.

How do tell in ketosis or not/ if foods temporarily knock one out of it and the time it takes to get back in?

Short of using a blood meter?

[Wilhelm]

I wouldn't worry about a blood meter.

It was fun having one, but i'd like to have back the money i spent on strips.

If you can sustain 50 net grams carbs, you'll know if you feel different.
I.e. not hungry.

Body is going to go into ketosis in the absence of carbs.
No need to chase higher levels of ketones circulating in the blood.
What matters is your cells are getting all the energy they need.

[JohnHelton]

I did it with a blood meter, but if you are below 50g net carbs per day, then you are probably in ketosis.

[richieportly]

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but I figured it was better etiquette than starting a new thread.

I've been watching a few videos by Ivor Cummins, where he is talking about CAC scores for your heart and the effects a low carb/keto diet has on your heart health.

I lost quite a bit of weight via low carb, so I can see the benefit for me, but I'm wondering where to find a counter view to all of this. Most of his material is very compelling and convincing, and I'm tempted by the book quoted here.

But then I bought a certain blue book too and ended up in the high risk cardiac range......

[Wilhelm]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2 ... %20glucose.

"Unlike skeletal muscle, heart muscle functions almost exclusively aerobically, as evidenced by the density of mitochondria in heart muscle. Moreover, the heart has virtually no glycogen reserves. Fatty acids are the heart's main source of fuel, although ketone bodies as well as lactate can serve as fuel for heart muscle. In fact, heart muscle consumes acetoacetate in preference to glucose."

https://www.virtahealth.com/blog/blood- ... genic-diet

"Blood Saturated Fats and CVD Risk -
The levels of saturated fats in various blood lipid fractions—and particularly the 16-carbon saturated fat called palmitate—have long been known to be correlated with risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and mortality (Wang 2003). We have previously posted a detailed review of this topic in our blog The Sad Saga of Saturated Fat. The key fact to keep in mind is that while a primary source of saturated fat in the blood is de novo lipogenesis (i.e., the production of fat from excess dietary carbohydrate) (Aarsland 2003), there is little if any relationship between dietary saturated fat intake and blood saturated fat content. And most importantly, because the keto-adapted state doubles the body’s ability to burn saturated fat for fuel while at the same time shutting down de novo lipogenesis, blood levels of saturated fats are reduced independent of dietary saturated fat intake (Forsythe 2008 & 2010, Volk 2014). Thus we have another disconnect between dogma and data: a risk factor that goes down with a well-formulated ketogenic diet despite the ‘diet-heart disease hypothesis’ which tries to link dietary saturated fat to blood cholesterol levels."

[Wilhelm]

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/11/617 ... ex.by/news

^Paper


Stem Talk podcast -
I find the biographical section quite interesting, but there are timestamped show notes as well if you want to skip ahead.
19:14 could be a good starting point if you want to save some time, though the earlier stuff is not entirely irrelevant.
https://www.ihmc.us/stemtalk/episode-11 ... J6XNvC4qbI

"Our guest today is Dr. Lilianne Mujica Parodi, the director of the Laboratory for Computational Neurodiagnostics at Stony Brook University.

We will be talking to Lily about her paper in PNAS last year that revealed neurobiological changes associated with aging can be seen in a person’s late 40s, a much younger age than what was previously thought. She and her colleagues at Stony Brook also found that this process may be prevented or even reversed based on dietary changes that involve minimizing the consumption of simple carbohydrates. The study’s targeted experiments showed that the biomarker for brain aging could be reliably modulated with consumption of different fuel sources. The study showed that decreasing glucose and increasing ketones resulted in the stability of brain networks."

[mbasic]

I was attempting another foray into intermittent fasting (16:8) but the wife starting reading about keto ... and I guess now we are doing The Ketos.

Those two things seem to go hand and hand (well, getting started with Keto anyways).

We slowly upped the amount of time fasting, and simultaneously doing low-carb.
She had a nice colorful pee strip, after fasting 20 hrs, doing some pelaton workouts, and eating almost-no-carb meal either side of the fast.
I've yet to make a dent in a pee strip.

She has gone all coocoo with it. Since has bought the blood-meter. Listens to podcasts all the time, etc.

When she first hit higher range on the pee strip, she kept texting me in the car to tell me about it....one sentence at a time.
My truck's bluetooth text ringer constantly going off multiple times in a row ...
....my kid sitting in the back seat asks, "Who's texting you all the time?"
Me: "Its your mom"
Kid: "What's wrong?"
Me: "Mom is in keto finally."
kid: "Where the heck is keto?"

[Hardartery]

I was attempting another foray into intermittent fasting (16:8) but the wife starting reading about keto ... and I guess now we are doing The Ketos.

Those two things seem to go hand and hand (well, getting started with Keto anyways).

We slowly upped the amount of time fasting, and simultaneously doing low-carb.
She had a nice colorful pee strip, after fasting 20 hrs, doing some pelaton workouts, and eating almost-no-carb meal either side of the fast.
I've yet to make a dent in a pee strip.

She has gone all coocoo with it. Since has bought the blood-meter. Listens to podcasts all the time, etc.

When she first hit higher range on the pee strip, she kept texting me in the car to tell me about it....one sentence at a time.
My truck's bluetooth text ringer constantly going off multiple times in a row ...
....my kid sitting in the back seat asks, "Who's texting you all the time?"
Me: "Its your mom"
Kid: "What's wrong?"
Me: "Mom is in keto finally."
kid: "Where the heck is keto?"

LOL. The pee strips are not particularly reliable indicators, but good for you guys. I've been keto for several months now and will soon transition to low carb for a while. Bigger guys take a lot longer to flush out the system, but if you're hitting it right you should lose a solid 6-8 poiunds of water as you flush out and get into ketosis. It can take up to three weeks though. Jerry Brainum has some informative Youtubes on the subject. He's a little dry, but provides a lot of info.